A Hidden Life and Other Poems
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II
"There, Buonarotti, stands thy statue. TakePossession of the form; inherit it;Go forth upon the earth in likeness fit;As with a trumpet-cry at morning, wakeThe sleeping nations; with light's terror, shakeThe slumber from their hearts; and, where they sit,Let them leap up aghast, as at a pitAgape beneath." I hear him answer make:"Alas! I dare not; I could not informThat image; I revered as I did trace;I will not dim the glory of its grace,Nor with a feeble spirit mock the enormStrength on its brow." Thou cam'st, God's thought thy form,Living the large significance of thy face.III
Some men I have beheld with wonderment,Noble in form and feature, God's design,In whom the thought must search, as in a mine,For that live soul of theirs, by which they wentThus walking on the earth. And I have bentFrequent regard on women, who gave signThat God willed Beauty, when He drew the lineThat shaped each float and fold of Beauty's tent;But the soul, drawing up in little space,Thus left the form all staring, self-dismayed,A vacant sign of what might be the graceIf mind swelled up, and filled the plan displayed:Each curve and shade of thy pure form were Thine,Thy very hair replete with the divine.IV
If Thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks,What shining of pent glories, what new graceHad burst upon us from the great Earth's face!How had we read, as in new-languaged books,Clear love of God in lone retreating nooks!A lily, as thy hand its form would trace,Were plainly seen God's child, of lower race;And, O my heart, blue hills! and grassy brooks!Thy soul lay to all undulations bare,Answering in waves. Each morn the sun did rise,And God's world woke beneath life-giving skies,Thou sawest clear thy Father's meanings there;'Mid Earth's Ideal, and expressions rare,The ideal Man, with the eternal eyes.V
But I have looked on pictures made by man,Wherein, at first, appeared but chaos wild;So high the art transcended, it beguiledThe eye as formless, and without a plan;Until the spirit, brooding o'er, beganTo see a purpose rise, like mountains piled,When God said: Let the dry earth, undefiled,Rise from the waves: it rose in twilight wan.And so I fear thy pictures were too strangeFor us to pierce beyond their outmost look;A vapour and a darkness; a sealed book;An atmosphere too high for wings to range:At God's designs our spirits pale and change,Trembling as at a void, thought cannot brook.VI
And is not Earth thy living picture, whereThou utterest beauty, simple and profound,In the same form by wondrous union bound;Where one may see the first step of the stair,And not the next, for brooding vapours there?And God is well content the starry roundShould wake the infant's inarticulate sound,Or lofty song from bursting heart of prayer.And so all men of low or lofty mind,Who in their hearts hear thy unspoken word,Have lessons low or lofty, to their kind,In these thy living shows of beauty, Lord;While the child's heart that simply childlike is,Knows that the Father's face looks full in his.VII
If Thou hadst been a Poet! On my heartThe thought dashed. It recoiled, as, with the gift,Light-blinded, and joy-saddened, so bereft.And the hot fountain-tears, with sudden start,Thronged to mine eyes, as if with that same smartThe husk of vision had in twain been cleft,Its hidden soul in naked beauty left,And we beheld thee, Nature, as thou art.O Poet, Poet, Poet! at thy feetI should have lien, sainted with listening;My pulses answering aye, in rhythmic beat,Each parting word that with melodious wingMoved on, creating still my being sweet;My soul thy harp, thy word the quivering string.VIII
Thou wouldst have led us through the twilight landWhere spirit shows by form, form is refinedAway to spirit by transfiguring mind,Till they are one, and in the morn we stand;Treading thy footsteps, children, hand in hand,With sense divinely growing, till, combined,We heard the music of the planets windIn harmony with billows on the strand;Till, one with Earth and all God's utterance,We hardly knew whether the sun outspake,Or a glad sunshine from our spirits brake;Whether we think, or windy leaflets dance:Alas, O Poet Leader! for this good,Thou wert God's tragedy, writ in tears and blood.IX
So if Thou hadst been scorned in human eyes,Too bright and near to be a glory then;If as Truth's artist, Thou hadst been to menA setter forth of strange divinities;To after times, Thou, born in midday skies,A sun, high up, out-blazing sudden, whenIts light had had its centuries eight and tenTo travel through the wretched void that lies'Twixt souls and truth, hadst been a Love and Fear,Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest,And all night long symbol'd by lamp-flames clear;Thy sign, a star upon thy people's breast,Where now a strange mysterious shape doth lie,That once barred out the sun in noontide sky.X
But as Thou earnest forth to bring the Poor,Whose hearts were nearer faith and verity,Spiritual childhood, thy philosophy,—So taught'st the A, B, C of heavenly lore;Because Thou sat'st not, lonely evermore,With mighty thoughts informing language high;But, walking in thy poem continually,Didst utter acts, of all true forms the core;Instead of parchment, writing on the soulHigh thoughts and aspirations, being soThine own ideal; Poet and Poem, lo!One indivisible; Thou didst reach thy goalTriumphant, but with little of acclaim,Even from thine own, escaping not their blame.XI
The eye was shut in men; the hearing earDull unto deafness; nought but earthly thingsHad credence; and no highest art that flingsA spirit radiance from it, like the spearOf the ice-pointed mountain, lifted clearIn the nigh sunrise, had made skyey springsOf light in the clouds of dull imaginings:Vain were the painter or the sculptor here.Give man the listening heart, the seeing eye;Give life; let sea-derived fountain well,Within his spirit, infant waves, to tellOf the far ocean-mysteries that lieSilent upon the horizon,—evermoreFalling in voices on the human shore.XII
So highest poets, painters, owe to TheeTheir being and disciples; none were there,Hadst Thou not been; Thou art the centre whereThe Truth did find an infinite form; and sheLeft not the earth again, but made it beOne of her robing rooms, where she doth wearAll forms of revelation. Artists bearTapers in acolyte humility.O Poet! Painter! soul of all! thy artWent forth in making artists. Pictures? No;But painters, who in love should ever showTo earnest men glad secrets from God's heart.So, in the desert, grass and wild flowers start,When through the sand the living waters go.XIII
So, as Thou wert the seed and not the flower,Having no form or comeliness, in chiefSharing thy thoughts with thine acquaintance Grief;Thou wert despised, rejected in thine hourOf loneliness and God-triumphant power.Oh, not three days alone, glad slumber brief,That from thy travail brought Thee sweet relief,Lay'st Thou, outworn, beneath thy stony bower;But three and thirty years, a living seed,Thy body lay as in a grave indeed;A heavenly germ dropt in a desert wide;Buried in fallow soil of grief and need;'Mid earthquake-storms of fiercest hate and pride,By woman's tears bedewed and glorified.XIV
All divine artists, humble, filial,Turn therefore unto Thee, the poet's sun;First-born of God's creation, only doneWhen from Thee, centre-form, the veil did fall,And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal,The highest Life with noblest Form made one,To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun;The living germ in this strange planet-ball,Even as thy form in mind of striving saint.So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint,Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield,In every splendour shadowy revealed:But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint,Power falls down straightway, speechless, dim-eyed, faint.XV
Men may pursue the Beautiful, while theyLove not the Good, the life of all the Fair;Keen-eyed for beauty, they will find it whereThe darkness of their eyes hath power to slayThe vision of the good in beauty's ray,Though fruits the same life-giving branches bear.So in a statue they will see the rareBeauty of thought moulded of dull crude clay,While loving joys nor prayer their souls expand.So Thou didst mould thy thoughts in Life not Art;Teaching with human voice, and eye, and hand,That none the beauty from the truth might part:Their oneness in thy flesh we joyous hail—The Holy of Holies' cloud-illumined veil!XVI
And yet I fear lest men who read these lines,Should judge of them as if they wholly spakeThe love I bear Thee and thy holy sake;Saying: "He doth the high name wrong who twinesEarth's highest aim with Him, and thus combinesJesus and Art." But I my refuge makeIn what the Word said: "Man his life shall takeFrom every word:" in Art God first designs,—He spoke the word. And let me humbly speakMy faith, that Art is nothing to the act,Lowliest, that to the Truth bears witness meek,Renownless, even unknown, but yet a fact:The glory of thy childhood and thy youth,Was not that Thou didst show, but didst the Truth.XVII
The highest marble Sorrow vanishesBefore a weeping child.3 The one doth seem,The other is. And wherefore do we dream,But that we live? So I rejoice in this,That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the blissOf conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream,(Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem)Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss.Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lieMean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity;Full well I know that if they were as highIn holy song as prophet's ecstasy,'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me!Speak gently to a child for love of Thee.XVIII
Thou art before me, and I see no morePilate or soldiers, but the purple flungAround the naked form the scourge had wrung,To naked Truth thus witnessing, beforeThe False and trembling True. As on the shoreOf infinite Love and Truth, I kneel amongThy footprints on that pavement; and my tongueWould, but for reverence, cry: "If Thou set'st storeBy feeble homage, Witness to the Truth,Thou art the King, crowned by thy witnessing!"I die in soul, and fall down worshipping.Art glories vanish, vapours of the morn.Never but Thee was there a man in sooth,Never a true crown but thy crown of thorn.DEATH AND BIRTH
A Symbol.
[Sidenote: He looks from his window on the midnight town.]
'Tis the midnight hour; I heardThe city clocks give out the word.Seldom are the lamp-rays shedOn the quick foot-farer's head,As I sit at my window old,Looking out into the cold,Down along the narrowing streetStretching out below my feet,From base of this primeval block,My old home's foundation rock.[Sidenote: He renounces Beauty the body for Truth the soul.]
How her windows are uplighted!God in heaven! for this I slighted,Star-profound immensityBrooding ever in the sky!What an earthly constellationFills those chambers with vibration!Fleeting, gliding, weaving, parting;Light of jewels! flash of eyes!Meeting, changing, wreathing, darting,In a cloud of rainbow-dyes.Soul of light, her eyes are floatingHither, thither, through the cloud,Wandering planets, seeking, notingChosen stars amid the crowd.Who, as centre-source of motionDraws those dark orbs' spirit-ocean?All the orbs on which they turnSudden with shooting radiance burn;Mine I felt grow dim with sheen,Sending tribute to their queen:Queen of all the slaves of show—Queen of Truth's free nobles—no.She my wandering eyes might chain,Fill my throbbing burning brain:Beauty lacking Truth withinSpirit-homage cannot win.Will is strong, though feeling waverLike the sea to its enslaver—Strong as hills that bar the seaWith the word of the decree.[Sidenote: The Resentment of Genius at the thumbscrews of worldly talent.]
That passing shadow in the street!Well I know it, as is meet!Did he not, before her face,Seek to brand me with disgrace?From the chiselled lips of witLet the fire-flakes lightly flit,Scorching as the snow that fellOn the damned in Dante's hell?With keen-worded opposition,playful, merciless precision,Mocking the romance of Youth,Standing on the sphere of Truth,He on worldly wisdom's planeRolled it to and fro amain.—Doubtless there it could not lie,Or walk an orbit but the sky.—I, who glowed in every limb,Knowing, could not answer him;But I longed yet more to beWhat I saw he could not see.So I thank him, for he taughtWhat his wisdom never sought.It were sweet to make him burnWith his poverty in turn,Shaming him in those bright eyes,Which to him are more than skies!Whither? whither? Heart, thou knowestSide by side with him thou goest,If thou lend thyself to aughtBut forgiving, saving thought.[Sidenote: Repentance.]
[Sidenote: The recess of the window a niche, wherein he beholds all the world of his former walk as the picture of a vain slave.]
Ah! come in; I need your aid.Bring-your tools, as then I said.—There, my friend, build up that niche."Pardon me, my lord, but which?"That, in which I stood this minute;That one with the picture in it.—"The window, do you mean, my lord?Such, few mansions can afford!Picture is it? 'Tis a showPicture seldom can bestow!City palaces and towers,Forest depths of floating pines,Sloping gardens, shadowed bowers;Use with beauty here combines."True, my friend, seen with your eyes:But in mine 'tis other quite:In that niche the dead world lies,Shadowed over with the night.In that tomb I'll wall it out;Where, with silence all about,Startled only by decayAs the ancient bonds give way,Sepulchred in all its charms,Circled in Death's nursing arms,Mouldering without a cross,It may feed itself on loss.[Sidenote: The Devil Contempt whistling through the mouth of the
Saint Renunciation.]Now go on, lay stone on stone,I will neither sigh nor moan.—Whither, whither, Heart of good?[Sidenote: Repentance.]
Art thou not, in this thy mood,One of evil, priestly band,With dark robes and lifted hand,Square-faced, stony-visaged men,In a narrow vaulted den,Watching, by the cresset dun,A wild-eyed, pale-faced, staring nun,Who beholds, as, row by row,Grows her niche's choking wall,The blood-red tide of hell belowSurge in billowy rise and fall?[Sidenote: Dying unto sin]
Yet build on; for it is ITo the world would gladly die;To the hopes and fears it gave me,To the love that would enslave me,To the voice of blame it raises,To the music of its praises,To its judgments and its favours,To its cares and its endeavours,To the traitor-self that opesSecret gates to cunning hopes;—Dying unto all this need,I shall live a life indeed;Dying unto thee, O Death,Is to live by God's own breath.Therefore thus I close my eyes,Thus I die unto the world;Thus to me the same world dies,Laid aside, a map upfurled.Keep me, God, from poor disdain:When to light I rise again,With a new exultant lifeBorn in sorrow and in strife,Born of Truth and words divine,I will see thee yet again,Dwell in thee, old world of mine,Aid the life within thy men,Helping them to die to thee,And walk with white feet, radiant, free;Live in thee, not on thy love,Breathing air from heaven above.[Sidenote: Regret at the memory of Beauty, and Appreciation, and Praise.]
Lo! the death-wall grows amain;And in me triumphant painTo and fro and outward goesAs I feel my coffin close.—Ah, alas, some beauties vanish!Ah, alas, some strength I banish!Maidens listening with a smileIn confiding eyes, the whileTruths they loved so well to hearLeft my lips. Lo, they draw near!Lo! I see my forehead crownedWith a coronal of faces,Where the gleam of living gracesEach to other keeps them bound;Leaning forward in a throng,I the centre of their eyes,Voices mute, that erst in songStilled the heart from all but sighs—Now in thirsty draughts they takeAt open eyes and ears, the TruthSpoken for their love and youth—Hot, alas! for bare Truth's sake!There were youths that held by me,Youths with slightly furrowed brows,Bent for thought like bended bows;Youths with souls of high degreeSaid that I alone could teach them,I, one of themselves, could reach them;I alone had insight nurst,Cared for Truth and not for Form,Would not call a man a worm,Saw God's image in the worst.And they said my words were strong,Made their inward longings rise;Even, of mine, a little song,Lark-like, rose into the skies.Here, alas! the self-same folly;'Twas not for the Truth's sake wholly,Not for sight of the thing seen,But for Insight's sake I ween.Now I die unto all this;Kiss me, God, with thy cold kiss.[Sidenote: "I dreamed that Allah kissed me, and his kiss was cold."]
All self-seeking I forsake;In my soul a silence make.There was joy to feel I could,That I had some power of good,That I was not vainly tost:Now I'm empty, empty quite;Fill me, God, or I am lost;In my spirit shines no light;All the outer world's wild pressCrushes in my emptiness.Am I giving all away?Will the sky be always grey?Never more this heart of mineBeat like heart refreshed with wine?I shall die of misery,If Thou, God, come not to me.[Sidenote: Dead indeed unto Sin.]
Now 'tis finished. So departAll untruth from out my heart;All false ways of speaking, thinking;All false ways of looking, linking;All that is not true and real,Tending not to God's Ideal:Help me—how shall human breathWord Thy meaning in this death![Sidenote: How is no matter, so that he wake to Life and Sight.]
Now come hither. Bring that tool.Its name I know not; but its useWritten on its shape in fullTells me it is no abuseIf I strike a hole withalThrough this thick opposed wall.The rainbow-pavement! Never heed it—What is that, where light is needed?Where? I care not; quickest best.What kind of window would I choose?Foolish man, what sort of huesWould you have to paint the East,When each hill and valley liesHungering for the sun to rise?'Tis an opening that I want;Let the light in, that is all;Needful knowledge it will grant.How to frame the window tall.Who at morning ever liesThinking how to ope his eyes?This room's eyelids I will ope,Make a morning as I may;'Tis the time for work and hope;Night is waning near the day.I bethink me, workman priest;It were best to pierce the wallWhere the thickness is the least—Nearer there the light-beams fall,Sooner with our dark to mix—That niche where stands the Crucifix."The Crucifix! what! impious task!Wilt thou break into its shrine?Taint with human the Divine?"Friend, did Godhead wear a maskOf the human? or did itChoose a form for Godhead fit?[Sidenote: The form must yield to the Truth.]
Brother with the rugged crownWon by being all divine,This my form may come to Thine:Gently thus I lift Thee down;Lovingly, O marble cold,Thee with human hands I fold,And I set Thee thus aside,Human rightly deified!God, by manhood glorified![Sidenote: Nothing less than the Cross would satisfy the Godhead for its own assertion and vindication.]
Thinkest thou that Christ did standShutting God from out the land?Hiding from His children's eyesDayspring in the holy skies?Stood He not with loving eyeOn one side, to bring us nigh?"Doth this form offend you still?God is greater than you see;If you seek to do His will,He will lead you unto me."Then the tender Brother's graceLeads us to the Father's face.As His parting form withdrew,Burst His Spirit on the view.Form completest, radiant white,Sometimes must give way for light,When the eye, itself obscure,Stead of form is needing cure:Washed at morning's sunny brimFrom the mists that make it dim,Set thou up the form again,And its light will reach the brain.For the Truth is Form allowed,For the glory is the cloud;But the single eye aloneSees with light that is its own,From primeval fountain-headFlowing ere the sun was made;Such alone can be regaledWith the Truth by form unveiled;To such an eye his form will beGushing orb of glory free.[Sidenote: Striving.]
Stroke on stroke! The frescoed plasterClashes downward, fast and faster.Now the first stone disengages;Now a second that for agesBested there as in a rockYields to the repeated shock.Hark! I heard an outside stoneDown the rough rock rumbling thrown![Sidenote: Longing.]
Haste thee, haste! I am athirstTo behold young Morning, nurstIn the lap of ancient Night,Growing visibly to light.There! thank God! a faint light-beam!There! God bless that little streamOf cool morning air that madeA rippling on my burning head![Sidenote: Alive unto God.]
Now! the stone is outward flung,And the Universe hath sprungInward on my soul and brain![Sidenote: A New Life.]
I am living once again!Out of sorrow, out of strife,Spring aloft to higher life;Parted by no awful cleftFrom the life that I have left;Only I myself grown purerSee its good so much the surer,See its ill with hopeful eye,Frown more seldom, oftener sigh.Dying truly is no loss,For to wings hath grown the cross.Dear the pain of giving up,If Christ enter in and sup.Joy to empty all the heart,That there may be room for Him!Faintness cometh, soon to part,For He fills me to the brim.I have all things now and more;All that I possessed before;In a calmer holier sense,Free from vanity's pretence;And a consciousness of bliss,Wholly mine, by being His.I am nearer to the endWhither all my longings tend.His love in all the bliss I had,Unknown, was that which made me glad;And will shine with glory more,In the forms it took before.[Sidenote: Beauty returned with Truth.]
Lo! the eastern vapours crackWith the sunshine at their back!Lo! the eastern glaciers shineIn the dazzling light divine!Lo! the far-off mountains liftingSnow-capt summits in the sky!Where all night the storm was drifting,Whiteness resteth silently!Glorious mountains! God's own places!Surely man upon their facesClimbeth upward nearer TheeDwelling in Light's Obscurity!Mystic wonders! hope and fearMove together at your sight.[Sidenote: Silence and Thought.]
That one precipice, whose heightI can mete by inches here,Is a thousand fathoms quite.I must journey to your foot,Grow on you as on my root;Feed upon your silent speech,Awful air, and wind, and thunder,Shades, and solitudes, and wonder;[Sidenote: The Realities of existence must seize on his soul.]
Distances that lengthening rollOnward, on, beyond Thought's reach,Widening, widening on the view;Till the silence touch my soul,Growing calm and vast like you.I will meet Christ on the mountains;Dwell there with my God and Truth;[Sidenote: Baptism.]
Drink cold water from their fountains,Baptism of an inward youth.Then return when years are by,To teach a great humility;[Sidenote: Future mission.]
To aspiring youth to showWhat a hope to them is given:Heaven and Earth at one to know;On the Earth to live in Heaven;Winning thus the hearts of EarthTo die into the Heavenly Birth.EARLY POEMS
LONGING
Away from the city's herds! Away from the noisy street!Away from the storm of words, Where hateful and hating meet!Away from the vapour grey, That like a boding of illIs blotting the morning gay, And gathers and darkens still!Away from the stupid book! For, like the fog's weary rest,With anger dull it fills each nook Of my aching and misty breast.Over some shining shore, There hangeth a space of blue;A parting 'mid thin clouds hoar Where the sunlight is falling through.The glad waves are kissing the shore Rejoice, and tell it for ever;The boat glides on, while its oar Is flashing out of the river.Oh to be there with thee! Thou and I only, my love!The sparkling, sands and the sea! And the sunshine of God above!MY EYES MAKE PICTURES
"My eyes make pictures, when they are shut." COLERIDGE.Fair morn, I bring my greeting To lofty skies, and pale,Save where cloud-shreds are fleeting Before the driving gale,The weary branches tossing, Careless of autumn's grief,Shadow and sunlight crossing On each earth-spotted leaf.I will escape their grieving; And so I close my eyes,And see the light boat heaving Where the billows fall and rise;I see the sunlight glancing Upon its silvery sail,Where a youth's wild heart is dancing, And a maiden growing pale.And I am quietly pacing The smooth stones o'er and o'er,Where the merry waves are chasing Each other to the shore.Words come to me while listening Where the rocks and waters meet,And the little shells are glistening In sand-pools at my feet.Away! the white sail gleaming! Again I close my eyes,And the autumn light is streaming From pale blue cloudless skies;Upon the lone hill falling 'Mid the sound of heather-bells,Where the running stream is calling Unto the silent wells.Along the pathway lonely, My horse and I move slow;No living thing, save only The home-returning crow.And the moon, so large, is peering Up through the white cloud foam;And I am gladly nearing My father's house, my home.As I were gently dreaming The solemn trees look out;The hills, the waters seeming In still sleep round about;And in my soul are ringing Tones of a spirit-lyre,As my beloved were singing Amid a sister-choir.If peace were in my spirit, How oft I'd close my eyes,And all the earth inherit, And all the changeful skies!Thus leave the sermon dreary, Thus leave the lonely hearth;No more a spirit weary— A free one of the earth!